All against Hamas? No, all against the Palestinians

All against Hamas? No, all against the Palestinians.

1. Sequence of the most important events relating to Palestine in 2006:

Hamas triumph in the elections in the Occupied Territories, January.

Kadima win the elections in Israel, March.

The United States carry on forking out more than 3.000 million dollars in

annual assistance to Israel (in addition to other large amounts paid out

by several private and public entities), the European Union maintain its

support for Israel by continuing with its preferential commercial, scientific

and political treatment.

The European Union, the principal donor to the Palestinians, cuts its assistance

of 600 million dollars a year to the Hamas government. The United States

does the same.

Israel stops the payment of more than 50 million dollars in customs’ taxes

that are collected and must be delivered to the Palestinian government.

The United Nations declare that 65 per cent of the inhabitants of Gaza and 48 per cent of those in the West Bank live under the poverty level.

The United States and the European Union isolate politically the legitimate

Palestinian government. Other countries and the United Nations follow this

policy.

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2. Other very important events for the same period:

Between the 7 and 9 April the Israeli army of occupation killed 14 Palestinians

civilians and injured 30 more.

Israel carries on constructing the wall of annexation in Palestinian occupied

land totally ignoring the International Court of Justice rulings, which declared

it illegal in 2004.

Israel closes the Karni border post and increases the penury of the Palestinians.

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3. Description of the current situation of the conflict:

The United States and the European Union demand from the Palestinian government that they should recognize Israel, desist from any kind of violent resistance and accept the peace agreements signed by the previous government. These demands are illegal:

a) The resistance to the occupation is an inalienable human right.

b) The agreements are contrary to the United Nations resolutions, which demand that the Israelis withdraw from the occupied territories without conditions.

c) Israel should fulfil the conditions of its acceptance to the United Nations

before it can demand recognition by other countries.

However, nothing is demanded of Israel.

As soon as the occupation is finished and the Palestinian State is

established there will not be any need, either for endless negotiations nor

for absurd conditions that do not contribute anything to a just solution

to the conflict and which exclude, in this way, peace as an option.

We need to bear in mind the following facts:

a) Israel is the aggressor and the belligerent force of occupation; the

Palestinian people are the victims.

b) Israel is a nuclear power and it has the most powerful army in the

Middle East. The Palestinians have a few poorly armed and ineffective

militias to attack Israel and to defend themselves from the army of

occupation. Also, the economic power of Israel is exponentially greater than

that of the Palestinians.

c) Israel has much more to win by using force than by following the rule

of law (as Ben Gurion demonstrated). It does not have any need to negotiate

(except to pull the wool over the international community’s eyes), or even

the wish to comply with international law, since it would mean that they

would have to retreat from the occupied territories, allow the return of

the refugees and pay compensations to the victims of their policies since

1947.

d) The Israeli non-compliance with the peace agreements to which everyone demand the Palestinians to adhere, is minor compared to its violations of international laws and agreements But the fact that that matter is not even mentioned is a clear sign of implied superiority, scorn for the Palestinian people and the mockery that Israel and its supporters make of UN resolutions and International humanitarian Law.

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4. Summary of the most significant events since October, 2000 (last

Intifada):

All the previous facts have not taken place in a vacuum; they have been preceded

by almost six years of intensification of the conflict. About 4000 Palestinians

have been murdered in attacks by the Israeli army of occupation (and the

illegal settlers). Israel has also taken approximately 9.000 prisoners, has destroyed approximately 8.000 houses, has illegally confiscated 250.000 dunams (a dunam is equivalent to thousand square meters) of Palestinian land and has uprooted more than one million citrus and olive trees. Cities and towns have been attacked by the Israeli army of occupation. Israel has prevented or made extremely difficult the

access of medical teams and the Red Cross, as well as the mass media, to

beleaguered populations. Israel has prevented international missions from

investigating its attack on Jenin refugee camp in 2002. Israel has murdered

the main Palestinian leaders and has bombarded the main buildings of the

Palestinian government, where they kept Arafat as a prisoner until he died.

Israel has destroyed or damaged the fragile Palestinian infrastructure and

its incipient economic resources, which together with their blockades, trade

restrictions and repressive policies, have left most of the population dependent

on international aid to survive.

Approximately 1000 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians during this

period. However, no Israeli has been arrested, no Israeli city has been besieged,

put under curfew or bombarded, not one Israeli house has been demolished,

and none of its land or trees has been confiscated or up-rooted by the Palestinians.

No Israeli has been deprived of medical assistance. Neither the Prime Minister

of Israel nor the seat of government has suffered any attack by the Palestinians.

The powerful Israeli infrastructure has not been damaged, nor have its economic

resources been blocked by the Palestinians.

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5. What happens in the different camps and what should we expect.

The Palestinian government has been three months in power and the

militias have, so far, enforced a truce that has lasted 20 months,

however, the West has, yet again, imposed new conditions on them rather than

demanding an end to the occupation. The UN agrees to all this in the same

way as it agreed to the aggression against Iraq and the governments of the

Arab countries are far more afraid of the United States and Israel than they

are of the anger of their people, who support the Palestinian cause.

The Hamas government is not responsible for the conflict in Palestine. It

is the result of almost forty years of Israeli occupation and fifteen years

of negotiations that have produced nothing but thousands of dead, injured

and imprisoned civilians as well as unbearable repression, misery and hardship

for the Palestinians.

The refusal of the Palestinians to accept this situation anymore has not

been matched by the previous Palestinian Fatah governments, which in the

last ten years have actually abandoned in reality, if not in their political

discourse, the essence of the Palestinian cause and surrendered to Israel and the United States instead of resisting with their people. Here, we need to remember that the miserable life conditions endured by the people have not been shared by these leaders, who enjoyed freedom of movement and plenty of money, as well as power over their compatriots.

The advent of this new government has been due partly to the desperation

of the people before the never ending deterioration of the general situation

and the rampant corruption of the previous governments. The old guard see

their privileges vanishing and they resent it. This situation is producing

power struggles between the President and his allies on one camp and the

new government and their supporters on the other. Members of the former government and Fatah boycott the Hamas government whilst still holding the hand of Israel and the Western powers.

Zionists could not be more satisfied. A Hamas government is a gift on a silver

platter. It is enough to think that they martyred Arafat until the end, despite

the fact that he accepted, willingly or not, Israeli policies and diktats.

As far as the members of the new government are concerned, they can only expect

the same missiles that killed their leaders: Yassin and Rantisi. This is

what the Israeli government has just announced: the members of the Palestinian

government are still targets of the Israeli military.

Israeli voters have approved the genocidal policies of the present

government (the only difference between the political parties in Israel is

the name of the leaders) and have confirmed their wish that

Palestine, without Palestinians, should be for the exclusive enjoyment of

the Jews, no matter where they come from. We must understand that a nation

that is the only nuclear regional power and that also has the support of

the most important nuclear power in the world, does not want to negotiate

with an opponent as powerless and forsaken as the Palestinians.

The West know the Zionist dream of “a land without people for a people without

land," which is at the same time the Palestinian nightmare of expulsion from

their land and a life as refugees without compensation or hope of justice.

They know that by cutting the economic aid to the Palestinian government

they are leaving 140,000 employees without a salary that would allow them

to feed their families, that is, 23 per cent of three and a half million

Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank. Their calculation is that

it will be the Palestinians themselves who will bring Hamas down, so that

they can again negotiate with the collaborators of Fatah, who have been so

useful in the past to neutralize the National Palestinian Movement.

It is risky and pointless to predict the future, but even so, being

aware of the historical precedents and the recent warning from the

International Committee of the Red Cross that “the lack of international

aid will produce a humanitarian, economic and security disaster," can only

induce pessimism.

Their own self-interest, since the powerful have not shown even a hint of

humanitarian feelings, or any common sense for that matter, should convince

them that they can only have the peace and security they claim they are searching

for, with justice and not with abuse of power and repression. The prophet

Isaiah, who lived in Jerusalem, knew this more than two thousand years ago,

and he wrote in one of the prophetic books: “Justice will be the source of

peace, and from righteousness, there will be calm and safety forever.” (I. 32,17)

Translated from Spanish by Ernesto Paramo and checked by Nancy Almendras both members of Tlaxcala the network of translators for linguistic diversity.